Category Archives: 1999

With each rewatch, the sheer abyssal emptiness of The Matrix’s “social critique” is all the more apparent, and the lazier the film’s self-positioning as a messianic, imaginative emissary to “truth” feels. Rather than a real debate between multiple planes of or perspectives on reality, The Matrix sanctifies itself as revelation, its needlessly self-important tone matched only by the hopelessly blinkered texture of its philosophizing. It strikes me increasingly that the film’s problem is that its metaphysical, pseudo-post-modern ruminations on the problem of perspective imbricate upon rather than actually problematizing its resolutely, almost faultlessly classical narrative structure. Which is to say: the film remains, above all, committed to its hero’s quest storyline about the achievement of final consciousness – and “pure” truth – rather than a more fundamental doubt that this new reality is any more viable or legitimate than the old one the film fetishistically pats itself on the back for “teaching” us out of. Whenever new vision and old storylines come into conflict, the film imagines them as inimical, always and faultlessly choosing and defaulting to the later rather than trying to work through how to image a truly modernist blockbuster. For a film about the terrifying beauty of new perception, The Matrix boasts an astonishingly narrow corridor of perceptual possibilities, and it remains truly choked in its field of vision, never exposing its aporias, never curious about the peripheries that haunt it. It remains only interested in shoring up its knowledge rather than questioning it.

Original Review:

The Matrix is an aggressively, almost violently, superficial film, which isn’t a bad thing. That it doesn’t realize it is aggressively superficial? That is a bad thing, and arguably the overriding “bad thing” about genre films in the years to come since The Matrix. In particular, the sci-fi genre has descended into a mess we seem only to just be coming out of. There was a great long period post-Matrix where science fiction seemed wholly unable to exist as either thoughtless puff piece or hard-working, idiosyncratic social commentary. Films consistently and inescapably combined the two to sums that were less than the sum of their parts, questing for a maturity without earning said maturity in genuine craft, all while eventually falling back on techno-fried action as an avenue for popular appeal when the ideas of the film failed to pan out. Take Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 for one. Not a bad film, but definitely a post-Matrix work of trying to have its edgy, thoughtful sci-fi cake and trying to eat its robot-alien action cake too. Continue reading →

To dispense with formalities: The Sixth Sense is not that good, but nor is it that bad. Its writer-director has never been a man subject to well-manicured, non-explosive statements – probably because he has never himself been prone to non-explosive statements (he did, after all, cast himself as a writer who saved the Earth in Lady in the Water). In his early days, he was, to his followers, a filmic genius, a genuine auteur in an age with precious few singularly great filmic voices. In recent years, he has become a filmic landfill, a genuine auteur for evil in an age with precious few singularly awful filmic voices. Everyone, regardless of what they think of him, seems to not understand the meaning of putting on the breaks. Either wonderful or despicable, he is a director who inspires opinions of great magnitude regardless of direction.

To some extent, both magnitudes are over-stated. His recent slate of films have managed the insurmountable task of consistent awfulness, but he is not the worst director in the history of cinema. Still, claims of his badness are more fitting than claims of his goodness. Even his best works are, if we are being honest, merely solid showpieces for a frequently confused writer with a better-than-average visual sense that at its best moments manages to convince audiences they are watching a better film than they really are. Case in point: The Sixth Sense, which is a sometimes sharp, occasionally sterling, often misguided work most notable for the frankly bizarre fact that it managed to rake in almost 700 million dollars at the global box office. Being a supernatural thriller, mind you. Ahh, movie-goers were different in the far-flung past of 1999. It dances vision of when The Exorcist (a similarly overrated film, although not as confused at the level of basic writing as The Sixth Sense)exploded into theaters in 1973 and ushered in a new age of respectable auteur-driven horror films for public audiences. But then, 1973 really was a different, pre-Jaws and pre-Star Wars, time culturally and filmically. 1999 is practically still in the womb. It was just yesterday, or so it seems at first glance. Continue reading →